Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home, maybe get a cup of Tea or Coffee. For this time-honored tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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Wolves have returned to The Netherlands (just a few though) and it is interesting to see how much detached to actual wilderness the average Dutch person is. A supposed wolf bumped into a child in a ‘forest’ today and there is a total panic now. Don’t go outside with your kids! We need to shoot the wolf!
Part of it is because we live in a small country I think. But the biggest part of it is that we treat our country like one big farm property and as a result we have very little actual nature left. Dutch people see the outdoors as nothing more than a path to take a walk in with no danger at all. Because there is none. Forests get designed, paths get carved out, the furthest you can be from a road in The Netherlands is I think 11km or something like that.
I noticed this on my holiday as well. I was hiking on a mountain path along a stream carved into the mountain some hundreds of years ago. At some point we saw some Dutch people ahead of us and they were loud and started throwing rocks into the stream, causing it to clog and spill over the side of the mountain to below. The complete direspect people have for nature in this country should be studied. Not only are you being a dick, you are also being a danger to the area causing floods and a fucking waterfall to slide down a mountain with loose rocks on it.
There is also a tv show I watch about B&B owners abroad looking for love. There is this woman in it who owns a hotel like thing in South Africa’s wilderness. In comes a Dutch man and while he is driven to this resort accompanied by a ranger, he tells the ranger that it would be a nice thing to set up a mountain biking company in Kruger National Park. You know, the park with the lions and rhinos and elephants and crocs and leopards and stuff. The ranger looked at him like he was a complete fucking idiot.
We act as if we completely own the world. As if it is our personal theme park to have fun in, instead of actual wilderness with biodiversity and wild animals and stuff.
We humans are part of nature yet we are so detached from it. I think this is the worst mental effect from capitalism.
This sounds similar to the UK. I’ve heard it called an ecological desert and almost everywhere you go feels very much like paths through some meadow or woods to take a stroll through. I would hope it’s not like this everywhere since they still have a few large natural parks, but from the little I’ve seen, it sounds like what you’re describing.
Yep, the hubris and arrogance of westerners in their relationship to nature is staggering. My coworkers are some of the most disrespectful people towards the environment I’ve ever seen. Drinking water from plastic bottles instead of filling up their glasses from the water cooler because it takes fewer trips to the kitchen, and throwing them in the nearest trash can instead of walking an extra 30 seconds to the recycling. I know in the grand scheme of things this isn’t what’s causing the climate catastrophe, but still I think it speaks volumes about these people
It’s also similar over here thanks to European colonizers making multiple species extinct